


Similarity

by thedevilchicken



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:50:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime has always thought that Cersei would be the love of his life. But in his dreams, there's someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Similarity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janie_tangerine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/gifts).



> Please not there are mentions of Jaime/Cersei throughout, and what I have in mind is the TV show looks but there are huge uber-spoilers for the books!

He's always thought that Cersei would be the love of his life. She's beautiful, she's so very intelligent, she was just like him from the moment they were born and in that narcissistic kind of way he could appreciate the similarity because looking like her and her looking like him always had a kind of bizarre symmetry to it. Besides, the Targaryens had always been more than happy to marry their sisters, and Cersei had always had the kind of ambitions that would have put the Mad King to shame.

They grew up together, Jaime and Cersei and later there was Tyrion but he hardly seemed to matter because Cersei never loved him like she loved her twin. Jaime couldn't help but feel a kind of familial fondness for his little brother, but he half suspected that was half to spite their father and half because no one was ever going to love Tyrion for Tyrion, at least not after the crofter's daughter. But Cersei... well, she's exactly what half the men in the Seven Kingdoms dream about at night. Queen Cersei, Robert's wife, Joffrey's mother, beautiful and lofty and so completely untouchable.

She's never been untouchable to him. Even after they were moved apart, first the length of the castle then half a kingdom from each other, she was his. But he's started to learn that he hates her for that, just as he hates her for Joffrey, for Myrcella and for Tommen - all three children called Baratheon when she and he both know they're Lannister through and through. He hates her for the day she married that great oaf Robert Baratheon, wonders how their life would have been had he took the crown himself. He hates her for taking him to bed even after her wedding day. He hates her for making him give away his life in pledge to the Kingsguard, hates her for the name that they all call him because his oath had meant something to him, even if Aerys Targaryen did not. But most of all he hates her for making him her slave. He often thinks it's a shame that he loves her for it, too.

He looks different with his hair shorn off. The beard doesn't help much, either. He told himself it was to make it harder for the spies to spy him on the long road to King's Landing the Red Keep where he'd find Cersei, and found her, after Joffrey's death. Their son. How he despised her for that. But in his dreams, his hair is bright and brushes his ears, he's perfectly clean-shaven, he's the man he was before the war and before captivity. He remembers how they felt, well enough that his dreams recall the details. Just like he remembers his hand.

Brienne of Tarth looked at him and smirked; he shook his head, not sure how he felt without the blonde hair that marked him as a Lannister because in dreams he knew both states, knew his past and present, knew himself completely. He rubbed at his chin, when the coarse blonde beard lay in daylight, and chuckled to himself in the half-dark under the big, bright moon he dreamt that night. Cersei barely recognised him. Their perfect symmetry was ruined, but somehow Jaime wasn't sure if it had ever really mattered at all.

"Brienne."

"Kingslayer."

" _Brienne._ "

She frowned at him in the half-light, scrubbing rough fingers through her short crop of rumpled hair.

"Jaime."

She made his name sound like a curse somehow and that just made him chuckle as he reached over and plucked a stray blade of grass from her hair. His left hand. It looked very much like it took a great effort on her part not to bat his hand away or snap at his wrist. Even in dreams, Brienne was still fierce.

"You're not pretty, Brienne."

She smiled tightly. "Jaime, you're barely a man."

He rubbed his right hand with his left. He'd be dreaming two hands for the rest of his life, two hands and bright blonde hair, the strength he'd used to have, the fearlessness he'd always felt before they took him captive and made him someone else, someone not quite new, not quite broken, not quite Jaime Lannister.

"They used to make bets," he said, not quite offhand, searching her face for her reaction. "At the tourneys, I mean, who'd be the one to take the Beauty's maidenhead. We all knew you wanted Renly, of course, but we all knew he was warming Loras Tyrell's bed. What did you see in him, Brienne?"

"He was..." She faltered, sucked her teeth for a moment then took a breath. "He was everything Jaime Lannister is not. Is that enough for you?"

"No, Brienne, it's not."

She sighed, crossing her arms over that remarkably slight chest of hers. Jaime shifted closer, cross-legged on the grass, brows raised and a hand on either knee as he gave her a rather persistent expectant look. After a few moments, she relented.

"He was courageous."

"And I'm not?"

"He was valiant."

"I think that's the same thing, Beauty."

She scowled. "He was loyal to his friends and his bannermen."

"But not to his house, or to his king."

"Joffrey?" She almost spat the name. "He's no Baratheon and you know that better than most, Lannister."

"His king nonetheless. And dear old Stannis? Had Robert left no heir, the crown would pass to the _elder_ brother."

"You can't think Stannis could rule like Renly."

"I'm a knight of the Kingsguard, Beauty. I serve the king, it's not for me to choose who rules."

She gave a wry chuckle and a tilt of her head. "Until your sword finds itself in your king's back, Ser. Perhaps you do not choose who rules, but you _do_ choose who doesn't."

It stung but his smile didn't falter. It was true, after all. He'd killed the Mad King, all those years ago, and sat to await the one who'd take the throne. Cersei would have had him take it himself, perhaps, take her as his wife as the Targaryens would, the golden pure blood lions of Lannister ruling in King's Landing as they did in Casterly Rock. But Ned Stark had come. Robert Baratheon followed.

"And your maidenhead, Beauty? I had a gold dragon on my pretty cousin Lancel, one day I'd like to collect on that bet." He narrowed his eyes. "Brienne, are you blushing?"

"It's none of your concern, Kingslayer."

"On the contrary - I'm very concerned." He moved closer, an elbow on each knee, his head in his hands. "Who knows where that cousin of mine has been." He wiggled his brows. "Or are you telling me you're still a maid?" He clapped his hands down on her thighs and watched her flinch at the action and at the contact. "You _are_. I thought that even with your..."

The back of her hand caught him off guard and even for a dream his jaw stung with the blow. He chuckled, flexing his jaw this way and that as he looked at her in the moonlight. He rubbed the smooth-shaven skin of his jaw, down his neck, just under the collar of his tunic, watching her watch him.

"You're strong for a girl."

"You're crude for a knight."

"People tell me I'm charming."

"They must have low standards."

"You compare me to Renly Baratheon, and he left much to be desired." Jaime placed a hand on her thigh and shook his head. "You're pining for a dead man."

"You're pining for your _sister_."

He shrugged, coming to his knees. "Cersei is the only woman I've ever loved." She didn't have a comeback for that statement of fact, let him move his hands higher over the warm leather of her trousers. "Cersei is the only woman I've ever _loved_." He shifted, settling himself astride her thighs as she sat there, back propped against the stump of an obliging old weirwood. He brought up one hand, brushed his fingertips over the silk of her tunic, over the slight swell of one breast.

"What are you doing, Kingslayer?" Her voice was quieter, lower, her breath against the hollow of his throat bittersweet with ale and honey.

He didn't answer. He kissed her instead.

It wasn't easy. There was a struggle and she was just as strong as he was, maybe even more so, taller with longer limbs and a longer reach and she was almost as broad as he, but her heart wasn't in it. Her morningstar and longsword sat by untouched as she shoved at his shoulders, pulled at his hair, pulled up a knee to try to try to seat it smartly in between his thighs. What he lacked in height made him quicker, though, his hands pinning her thick wrists up over her head as he pressed her flat to the grass. The blades were damp under his knees as he ducked his head to press his mouth to the crook of her neck; she almost growled as she shifted beneath him, all tight muscles over too-long limbs.

"Tell me you don't want me," he murmured, catching the lobe of one ear between his teeth to suck.

"I hate you," she hissed, back arching, her wrists twisting in his grasp.

"That's not a no, Brienne."

He tore her tunic. She let him do it though the look on her wide face was far from encouraging. The silk split all the way to the neck, catching at the laces at her throat and he left it there, spread it open from that high anchor point, let the palms of his hands brush up over her flat belly to the swell of her breasts, finding her nipples taut. He rolled them between finger and thumb for a moment, pseudo-thoughtful, amused by the way her back arched just a fraction and this time not in struggle.

"Has anyone ever touched you like this, Brienne?"

She shook her head, her eyes closed tight.

He ducked his head down to brush his cheek against her stomach, his lips between her breasts, his tongue around one nipple.

"What are you going to do?"

"Wait and see."

She let him undress her. He did it slowly, because he could, because with Cersei it was always such a hurry, always the threat of discovery or the call of duty, stolen moments here and there. He bared every inch of Brienne's long, solid body, let her hot skin rest on the damp grass and bring up gooseflesh. He ran his hands over her, from her ankles over her muscular calves, hair tickling at his palms. Brienne of Tarth was too much the warrior for feminine concessions but Cersei shaved herself smooth, and the contrast was amusing, intriguing. His hands trailed higher, squeezed at her hips, thumbs tracing the bones there as he let his fingers move down. He slipped his fingertips over her thighs, nudged them apart inch by inch because he could see the tension in her. She was scared, he thought. He was scaring her.

She laughed, suddenly, a brittle sound, and crossed her legs in front of him. Perhaps she wasn't scared after all.

"Take off your clothes, Kingslayer." He paused; she raised her brows. "I mean it. Take off your clothes."

He brought himself up to his knees; he pulled off his tunic as she shifted, sat cross-legged in the grass for a moment before pulling herself up to her feet. The moon on her skin washed her out to soft milk white but couldn't disguise even one of her freckles, and Jaime found he couldn't have cared less about that if he'd tried. Cersei was perfection from top of head to tip of toe; that wasn't what he wanted here. But suddenly he was unsure of just what he would be getting.

He held out one hand to her; she pulled him up to his feet with a strange little hint of a smile and he set about the rest of his clothing. He toed off his boots and shimmied off his leather trousers, nudged them aside with one foot and stood there, perfectly naked in the cool night air. An unfamiliar feeling pooled in the pit of his stomach as he looked at Brienne then, taller than him, maybe stronger, probably heavier, dangerous in her own right. Vulnerability had never been part of Jaime Lannister's emotional vocabulary but there it was inside as she looked at him, as he stood there bare and erect and almost hesitant despite himself. But he'd started this. He had to know where it would lead.

She ran her fingers through his thick blonde hair, twisted them into it as she looked down at him, her cheeks quite flushed. Her other hand went to his chest, blunt nails raking down, making him shiver as her big, broad hand finally wrapped tight around his cock.

"I doubt Cersei would approve of this," she said, her expression schooled to neutral.

"Does it feel like I care?" He pushed his hips forward against her hand and she gave a soft little squeeze that made him shiver down the length of his spine.

"Lie down, Kingslayer."

He was used to taking orders. Of course, she was a knight of the Rainbow Guard, for all the significance that particular notion carried since Renly Baratheon's death, and he was a knight of the Kingsguard, another breed entirely, ages old. But he did as he was told, stretching out long-limbed and muscular in the damp grass under the trees and under the moon as he watched her. She came closer, stood over him, one foot at each side of his ankles, arms crossed over her chest. Her sex was bared and his eyes strayed down there, lingering over her thighs and the coarse hair that covered another of the places Cersei liked to make herself so very smooth from time to time. But then the smooth, cool skin of one large foot insinuated itself between his thighs and his gaze flickered cautiously back up to her face.

"Hold it still," she told him, rubbing the arch of her foot along the length of him to indicate just what she had referred to. He took himself in hand. She stepped back, and she sank to her knees astride his calves. She seemed so sure of herself as she moved up, hands and knees, bent low enough that when she poked out her tongue it dragged over the tip of Jaime's cock. It brushed the skin between her breasts, over her belly as she pulled up his free hand, his right hand, nipped at the fleshy base of his thumb and pinned it above his head.

"It was _not_ your cousin Lancel." She sat herself up, astride his thighs, letting him rest himself against her smooth, flat belly. She shuffled forward, pulled herself up higher on her knees. Her hand went down as she looked at him with those wide blue eyes, so wholly lacking in guile, open, unable to utter a word of a lie. Cersei had always been a schemer; she said she had to be, that Jaime had his strength and his sword and his knighthood but everything a woman had she had to take by art, or simply leave to chance if she hadn't the requisite intelligence. Brienne was a different kind. Brienne was like him.

One big hand closed around his around him, bigger than his and almost as rough but for the difference in years between them, like a man's but somehow not. You could mistake Brienne of Tarth for a knight on the battlefield but when she removed her armour she was different, awkward, neither masculine nor overtly feminine. That didn't bother Jaime in the slightest. Her other hand moved, a big blunt thumb tracing the curve of his lower lip before moving down, fingertips trailing, nails raking almost hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make him hiss and to make her laugh quite lowly, at him, the way few dared. Then her fingers slipped down, parted her lips and shuffled him into place.

"Is this what you wanted?" she asked, slowly seating the tip of his cock against the little nub between the lips between her thighs. He nodded, hips shifting just a fraction against the warmth of her. "Why?" Her hand moved, guiding his hand holding his cock just a little further down, directing him. She pressed down, taut thighs parting wider to start to take him inside her. "Do you find it amusing to take me just because they all mock me? Is this a story to tell?" She shifted down lower, tight around him, taking more. "What does it mean to you to be the first man to have me?" A quick thrust of her hips, a cry muted in her throat and he was in her, all the way inside her. Her eyes closed. Her hands rested against his chest.

"It wasn't my cousin Lancel." She shook her head, tightly, fingers flexing against his chest. He knew it wasn't. He drew his hands down, brushed them over her thighs to rest at her hips. "It's me."

She moved; there was no confirmation or denial though he needed none. He didn't know if she meant it but she moved, still so tight around him that he didn't know how she could move at all. Then she moved again, deliberately, pushing with her hips, pushing against him.

"Give me your hands, Kingslayer."

He obliged, bringing them up to hers; she twined their fingers, little to do with intimacy and a lot to do with leverage as she moved against him, harder, deeper.

"Like this?" she asked.

Jaime chuckled breathlessly, his hands slick with sweat against hers despite the chill in the air. For a moment she sounded so vulnerable, not like that giant of a woman who was likely one of the only people he'd ever met who he truly believed could kill him. Maybe not at that precise moment, but he hadn't discounted the possibility that she'd be the death of him at some point.

"Like that," he confirmed.

She rested one hand against that weirwood stump for balance; he shifted his freed hand to the juncture of her thighs, thumb finding that little nub between them to tease it as she moved. Her skin shone with sweat as he knew his did also; he gripped her hand and pushed up against her, his heels pressing into the grass. In his dreams, cousin Cleos was never close at hand, only Brienne. She kissed him fiercely, angry and confused as her breath caught in her throat. Their bodies came together over and over again, the sound of his resounding in his ears, the joining harder than should have been comfortable. It shouldn't have felt so good to him but he supposed that in dreams anything could and would feel good, anything could seem like a good idea, anything could seem logical when in the waking world it made no sense at all.

There was no grand simultaneous release. It was staggered and close to painful with the power of Brienne's body above him, with the way she clasped his biceps as she shuddered against him, trembled with it, came close to a moan though of course she couldn't possibly concede a victory of such a calibre as that. He pushed into her after, as she struggled to catch her breath and still her erring muscles, as she ran her fingers through her damp blonde hair. He came with a judder that almost pulled the muscles in his back, with a groan that he muffled with his right hand though he couldn’t fathom why. He couldn't think he cared what she thought of him.

She pulled away after a long moment, stood and turned and started to dress. Her movements were stiff, awkward from the tension that had spread through her and just barely released. Jaime paused a second to watch her, not that she was an overwhelmingly pleasant sight at all, not compared to Cersei who had always had an uncanny ability to look her very best at any given moment, whatever that moment held. Brienne was something else entirely, honest where his sister had her network of spies and contacts and subtle subterfuges that Jaime would never and could never understand. Brienne was a rough-hewn giant of a woman who had no use for whisperings. Then he rose, slipped his hands to her hips and rested his head down between her shoulder blades.

"This doesn't mean I love you," he told her, nuzzling one broad, freckled shoulder.

Brienne turned, bare-breasted with tunic in hand as she looked at him. "This doesn't mean I can stand the sight of you," she replied, and Jaime couldn't help but laugh as he turned away to dress.

His trousers were strewn over the weirwood from which he retrieved them, fingers brushing the old wood as he did so. It splintered, jabbed his fingertip and he cursed rather colourfully under his breath; he teased out the splinter and sucked away the blood, tasted it coppery and bright in his mouth as he finished dressing, as he settled himself back down in the grass and pulled his blanket up around him.

"Sleep well, Beauty," he told her; she muttered something in response that he was sure he'd find far from complimentary. He closed his eyes, and smiled as he settled in to sleep. In his dreams, he slept to wake to the world. He'd wake far from that place, far from Brienne of Tarth.

He's always thought that Cersei would be the love of his life. He thought she was like him, that being her twin made them alike, made her part of him, essential to him. He supposes that she will always be a part of him, he supposes that he will always be tied to her, by blood and by honour and by a love that makes him wish that he could just tear out his heart and have it over with. Sometimes he wishes he could go away inside at the sight of her; instead he comes alive.

He doesn't love Brienne. He has an odd respect for her, for her stubborn loyalty, for her strength, for her character, for being unlike any woman that he's ever known. She wears armour and has never once sought to use some female wile to beguile him, though he supposes that would seem somewhat perverse from the wide-eyed, plain-featured, ill-proportioned Maid of Tarth. What she has is her honour and her skill and seems she would never compromise either one of them. There's a kind of honest beauty in that, the kind of beauty Cersei's never had. She couldn't.

He's always thought that Cersei would be the love of his life, and he supposes that she is because she will never permit him another - he is hers, and hers alone. But in his dreams there's someone else, and Cersei will never know.


End file.
